


Fear of Dragons

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-12-20
Updated: 2003-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1632830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caspian and Edmund are left alone when Eustace disappears on Dragon Island.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fear of Dragons

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Kest

 

 

"It'll be worse if it does," said Edmund, "because we shan't know where it is. If there's a wasp in the room I like to be able to see it."   
 

* * *

  


Caspian had known perfectly well where, and who, the wasp was. For three years, he had been waking from dreams so violent and sweet that they left him shaking all over his body, sitting up straight amid the silks and furs of his royal bed, and wailing in pure anguish that the King had dissolved with the dream. Over and over again, he had seen Edmund walking back out of the bright doorway at the Fords of Beruna, his head held proudly high and his pale eyes boring directly into his, challenging him, inviting him into his strange hidden kingdom. In the painful moment of awakening, the bedchamber would be dark and stifling, the silks would seem too close and sticky, and he would walk over to the window, staring angry and trembling at the moon for hours. Sometimes, there would be a naiad or young faun entangled in the silks; it was surely the prerogative of a King of Narnia to order those of his subjects into his bed that caught his eye, and he always scrupulously offered preferment and favours to their families once he had decided that the young creature was growing spoiled or homesick. On such nights, he would think wearily that only a king is fit to share a king's bed, and the soft young creatures would seem like an extension of the clammy silk bedclothes, one more set of dank tentacles dragging him out of his hard bright dreams. 

When he saw the children struggling in the sea, he had dived in at Drinian's first shout, without reflecting on what he might be rescuing. The Voyage was a quest for adventure, after all; it was also a voyage into the unknown, and whatever dangers he met in the seven seas, they could not be more disturbing than those struggles in his head, late at night. He dived into the water without thinking, as a disciplined machine; he surfaced with the King in his arms, and a giddy smile on his lips, which, thankfully, Edmund couldn't see, as his eyes were blinded with the sea-water. On deck, Caspian clapped the King on the back, at which he reeled slightly, and then blinked up at him with a trustful, glad look. Caspian smiled back then, a firmer, surer smile, but with a strange pity in his mind. How harsh and ugly the woolen clothes Edmund wore looked; hiding the muscles in his arms that had always made Caspian's throat grow dry whenever Edmund wielded a sword. In the lumpy short leggings, and with his curls plastered against his forehead, he looked slighter, younger; he must have hard masters, in that other world of stern rules and untalking trees. 

Caspian sometimes wondered whether Edmund's tales of callous institutions and magic machines were elaborate metaphors for a spiritual training that he was undergoing, over there. The King had once told him a fantastic tale of servitude - "fagging", he called it - and a day when he had not cleaned a study properly, and had been forced to run, naked, up and down a freezing attic while ranks of youths stood and jeered, some tripping him up with sticks used for gaming, some flicking wet cloths at him. It sounded like such an undignified ordeal for a High King to undergo - why, not even a Calormene would stoop to such childish cruelty! - that it must be an elaborate metaphor for some spiritual discipline. Some mortification of the flesh, surely, that brought Edmund closer to Aslan. A world that had brought forth Edmund and Peter must be stronger, and harsher, than the gay land of Narnia. Caspian longed to see it, longed to prove himself against its sterner challenges. Edmund seemed weakened by his tests, more girlish, but his eyes shone into Caspian's with their old impish, dangerous glare. Caspian looked at the rills of water running down from his hair into his shirt, and longed to follow them with his fingers. Later. In the cabin. 

But then, that brat, Edmund's cousin, also came into the cabin, and lay puking and complaining, all night, every night. Edmund feigned bluffness, but Caspian heard the quick intakes of breath, the savage asides, the pillow being punched in the night when he thought his cabin-mates were asleep. The same restlessness, the same longing was stirring in the King's blood. If only the wasp could be banished from the room, and Old Narnia and New Narnia finally meet. If only Eustace could be left on a small island until the Dawn Treader returned, and Caspian and Edmund could spend the broiling nights with their hearts pounding against each other. If only.   
 

* * *

  


Edmund was wet through, and exhausted, but he still could not stop staring into the darkness. He just knew the brute was sneaking around in the dark, probably summoning its dragonish clan to a feast of Well-Fed Narnian. Somewhere, alone on the island, with his head stuffed full of modern nonsense, Eustace was blundering, probably crying for the British Ambassador. You couldn't begin to tell a chap like Eustace all the dangers that could be lurking on any island they landed on. Blast him, it was difficult enough to get him to eat sensible food, or even drink any mead, never mind teaching him all the ways of magical beasts and secret spells that Edmund had had to learn in the long years while he grew to manhood in Cair Paravel. If only he had been sent to boarding school, at least, he would at least had some of the nonsense knocked out of him - even if he would keep insisting that Talking Beasts were only circus animals. Eustace was worse than a girl. At least girls knew that they were weaker than boys, and made sure they kept safe. Eustace didn't even realise he needed protecting. 

Edmund thanked his stars that Caspian was there to laugh at Eustace too. Oh, he knew it was beastly to make jokes about his own cousin, but it was such fun when they both pulled a Eustace "you-odious-stuck-up-pig" face at exactly the same time, just before Eustace himself started complaining, or mimicked the way he would pick at a pavander. Only little jokes, because it was a bit rotten to make fun of the chap when he was so obviously down. Anyway, Edmund's spiteful little jokes had caused a great tragedy once, and he had that side of himself firmly under control now. Caspian was a great help whenever Edmund started brooding about the past, always reminding him of his great deeds as a King. Strange to think that it was legends about his own glorious adventures that had kept Caspian's hopes for Old Narnia alive, when Caspian was only a kid and being bullied by that rotten uncle of his. It was hard to imagine Caspian as a kid; he was so confident and manly nowadays. In the three years since he'd become king, he had grown into a fine youth, and Edmund was humbly glad that he didn't mind a kid like himself tagging along. The gorgeous feasts on the Splendour Hyaline and the dashing adventures along the Western Wastes had sunk into the back of his memory, somewhere along with the images of himself and Lucy making tents under the nursery table as very little children. He knew they had happened in his lifetime, but to another Edmund. Of course, he wasn't quite the mean little kid who had teased Lucy about her silly tales of Lantern Waste, either. Why, he'd just been made head of his year at school, and was on the third cricket team, too - but the Dawn Treader was a holiday from all that. And Caspian was being just splendid. If only Eustace would buck up too! 

Edmund felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned his scared eyes sideways. Gradually, he made out Caspian's dark eyebrows and searching stare, and relaxed. 

"Phew! I say, you don't half scare a fellow sneaking up on him like that. Can't sleep either?" Glad not to be alone, he added, "Bother that blighter Eustace. If only I knew he was safe, I'd be able to sleep." 

Caspian sat down. "It is like your Majesty's merry heart to think only of your kinsman, and not at all of your own danger. You bring courage into this miserable night." 

Edmund laughed, a very small, choked laugh. "It's pretty decent of you to say that, Caspian. I know we've been a fair bit of trouble since we landed aboard. We're all rather lubberly, and - well - we've not been much help to you finding Aslan's Country, have we?" 

Caspian was quiet for a bit, and then said, tightly, "If there is an Aslan's Country." He swallowed, and put his hand on Edmund's knee. "I sometimes wonder... if I'm worthy. If I am true enough to Old Narnia, to the Old Ways, to find the Country. If Aslan isn't hiding it from me, or if it won't slip away from Narnia forever. I have been trying to restore the Old Ways, but what if I can never become a true leader of Narnia? What if you leave as Peter and Susan left, and I have no-one left to teach me?" 

Edmund said indignantly, "But you're a splendid King! We are most pleased with your works, and find you a fit Lord to reign - " and stopped, slightly embarrassed. The old, lordly style of address was becoming easier in his mouth, but he still felt an awful chump when he used it. What would the chaps at school say if they heard? Caspian gasped, quickly, and said, "You mean it? You mean I am your equal? You mean that we share the bond of kingship, the breath of Aslan?" 

"Why - yes. We share the overlordship of Narnia, under the High King Peter, of course." 

Caspian drew his breath in raggedly, and said, "My lord, there is more I would share with you. You know - " 

Edmund's mind lurched between blankness and fear as, quickly, Caspian's hand moved up his thigh. Caspian's other hand pulled his head down towards the earth, down towards his own, and Edmund felt Caspian's hard thigh pushing beneath his legs. A wave of memory flashed through his limbs, of hot drunken nights under the stars with a Calormene lord, of Bacchus boldly climbing into his bedchamber while Edmund was awake and restless, and his hand automatically reached up for Caspian's hair, his legs winding themselves about Caspian's, his weight bearing the other boy down to the ground. Shaking, dazed with tiredness and the memory in his loins, he leaned down and placed a kiss on Caspian's mouth. The shock of Caspian's stubble harsh against his smooth cheek, and the low moan as he opened his mouth, suddenly roused him from his daze, and he pushed Caspian back, more in panic than roughly. 

"I - I ..." Neither the schoolboy nor the king had words for this shame, the shame of adult knowledge combined with a childish body, of lustful memory and chaste mind. The only words he could find were pitiful: "I'm not your fag." He knew, of course, that was not what Caspian thought, but was too hot with confusion to say more. Caspian scrambled up, and said stiffly, "My lord, I had not meant - oh, dash it, Edmund! Do you not feel the same desire?" 

"I - I don't know," said Edmund, and found to his amazement, and relief, that he was blubbing. "I... think we have enough dragons to fight, at the moment." 

 


End file.
